Etymologies

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

1596, from Dutch ezel ("easel"), originally ("donkey"), from Middle Dutch esel ("donkey"), from Latin asinus ("donkey"); from the comparison of a donkey carrying a burden and putting a painting on a wooden stand. (Wiktionary)

Examples

We freely admit that we take inspiration in easel mode from the metaphor of the TV and agree that people need a web appliance but by the same token we are still a webbook and work like one in laptop mode.

On the easel was a wild abstract in crude bright colours, bearing no visible relation at all to the scene in the harbour before them; it was unexpected, compared to the neat, anaemic little water-colours that nineteen out of twenty Trewissick harbour-painters produced.